The Works of God

Dianne’s phone call had happy news: “they know it isn’t lymphoma, leukemia or diabetes.”

That stopped me.  I didn’t know they were looking for things that medically serious.

Background: for awhile Paul has been having what we call ‘spells’ where he is obviously uncomfortable, refuses to eat, and sleeps more than normal.  We did the normal routine of checking on his diet and whatever sicknesses were being passed around his school.  But the spells didn’t stop.

So Dianne, good mother that she is, started the rounds with doctors.  Initial blood work didn’t show anything.  First round of medical intervention seemed to make it worse, so we stopped that.  They ruled out the serious things mentioned before.  We have a reasonable plan we’ve worked out with his primary doctor to try to figure this out.

God is giving us good medical care and I am grateful for the doctors and specialists we have.  But we are constantly reminded that as skilled as they are, they don’t know everything.  They can’t know everything.  I trust they are doing their best, but I do not hope in them.

My point is simply this: God alone is sovereign.  God knows what is going in inside of Paul.  God cares about Paul even more than I do.  There is not one promise that God has made that he will fail to keep.  He is absolutely, entirely trustworthy.

His ways are inscrutable even as they are perfect.  I know God will help us even as I don’t know the particular outcome of these episodes for Paul:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  Romans 8:26

Dianne and I aren’t playing around with a notion that somehow believing good things or hoping for the best or bargaining with God has any value at all.  Jesus himself is holding it all together.  Nothing can separate us from Jesus:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:35-39

So, we don’t know if these spells are serious or will be easily dealt with.  But I do know this: God is good, he has never done me or Paul wrong, and someday I will clearly see it is all for his glory and for my good.